"1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

2 really was just me being unimpressed generally. For some reason I didn't think much of the ipad...

Now I'm old and everything is amazing.

I am applying that dismissiveness to all objections equally based off their motivation. I don't agree with the argument on either side of the "motherboard/mainboard" debate. But I can emphasize with the motivation of the side pushing for "mainboard" because it is the same as your argument about misusing "gay" being unnaceptable. I disagree with their specific objection but I understand the motivation. I don't understand the side pushing for "motherboard" because the heart of the objection seems to be "things were better when I was young". Presented with those two options, why not side with the people who you would side with if we were arguing over a different word such as "gay"?

The reason I push against "mainboard" is, I think, the analogous concern. While it's possible in principle to type out the letters "mainboard" without meaning anything by it, in practice the people who say it are motivated by a package of ideas about gender which I think are bad and would be harmful for society if they were more broadly adopted. To say "mainboard" would make me appear to be endorsing those ideas.

I would argue this is a symptom of the same phenomenon and therefore the heart of the objection is still the same.

I also live in the rural Midwest, so I figured that was about how far in the past you on the coast think we are with this sort of thing - and you'd be right, to an extent.

It seems there's a group of people who are too far in the other direction too. When I heard that it's preferred to say "allowlist" instead of "whitelist", do you know what my reaction was?

"Sure, whatever."

And I moved on with my life. It has zero impact on my day to day. The pushback reminds me of people who deadname others on purpose. Like, who cares? Bob wants to be called Sally now? Sure, whatever.

However it tends to become a password game. There's a new password every few months. If you know the new password, you get to feel above those who don't. It's as we invent new crimes to charge people with.

If no one calls it out (because sure, whatever), it keeps ratcheting up. Then banal conversations turn into minefields. What you say gets invalidated because you used the wrong password.

Is this a common occurrence for you? It has never happened to me.

I'm skeptical about whether it's actually and issue or mostly a hypothetical issue.

So - I used a word that someone didn’t like, they corrected me, I adjusted without deep apology and moved on, and everything was fine. Who cares? Why is this such a huge issue, language evolves all the time.

My suspicion is - of people who run into problems with language at tech companies, half of the problem is due to their reaction to being corrected.

My response would be more like: And just who are you?

So in a way, you’re right.

Is every disagreement you experience combative? Every correction? I tell you, I had a catch-up yesterday with a former team member that turned to the subject of web3, and that friendly debate was approximately 50x more combative as the moment I described.

Because, look, I’m a successful, senior, valued individual who is respected and liked by my team. In the grand scheme of my life, if someone wants me to use one word vs another, why do I care? I have thousands of things that are more important to worry about than that.

It’s the same way that I work with someone who likes to be addressed in emails by their full name - okay, no problem, remind me once and I’ll just move on. Or a coworker I had who was from Africa and did not want to be referred to as “African American” - sure, fine.

Doing so diminishes me not at all, because I don’t define my worth based on whether I use the correct (or incorrect) word or not.

It seems like a lot of the objections that I see in this thread have to do with people having issues being “corrected” or “policed” or “silenced”, all of which have to do with how they interpret how those moments have wronged THEM. Another option would be to let it go. Yet another would be to see themselves as making the faintest possible effort to make sure people feel welcome.

That's the gap between you and others in this thread. What we've experienced is not that one individual is genuinely offended and everyone just moves on, it's that they immediately run the HR/management with crocodile tears in their eyes, and then demand you be fired. They conclude that the only reason to refuse their request is because you're an ideological enemy and don't care about anything else.

And that's why it's bad. It's not about genuinely taking offence, and never was. It is about establishing dominance over powerful institutions so they can turn them all into Twitter - weapons in a never-ending dystopian culture war that can never be won because the victory conditions change every day.

So I guess the password is “don’t use a colloquialism based on an ethnic stereotype “, and that seems pretty straightforward and reasonable.

This entire discourse is so full of straw men it's hard to believe you have actually had real conversations with these people.

There is so much effort during these conversations toward "calling in" vs "calling out" that I am very confused how a conversation could ever get to the point you describe. You'd have to be really callous, and completely unwilling to meet your conversation partner on an even field, to elicit such reactions.

And no, Twitter pile-ons don't count as evidence for your argument -- Twitter is very, very far from an accurate cross-section of "real life".

On the other hand, all that nonsense about 'master' was ridiculous. Master's degrees, the master boot record, come on let that one go.

I wouldn't have believed you that there are people like this, but a few minutes after i read your comment, i saw replies (requires showdead) to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31123102 that said men cannot be discrimated against...

Sounds preposterous, but is not. I had a boss around 2000 who believed wholeheartedly that people brought from Africa to the United States were the only slaves that ever existed in history anywhere on Earth.

This came up because someone noted in passing conversation that an anniversary was coming up related to the Atlantic slave trade in the 1600's, and my boss insisted that there couldn't have been slavery before 1776, because slavery was started by the United States.

I walked out of the break room early in the conversation and decided to let the others handle it. She was my boss, and I would have gotten fired for contradicting her.

https://www.britannica.com/summary/Transatlantic-Slave-Trade...

Peak transatlantic: 78,000 new slaves per year.

https://thecurrentmsu.com/2021/01/24/prison-labor-americas-s...

Current US forced prison labor population: 1-2.1 million.

Similarly, if there was political consensus that US companies shouldn't own or hire slaves overseas, then the bit starting with "within" would be easy to remove as well.

None of this has had any chance of happening since the thirteenth amendment was passed (not even during BLM). It's pretty clear that a big chunk of the US's leaders are pro-slavery.

When one has a essentially complete control over another person's life, there are ways to make this life hell, even while staying within the legal bounds.

A few things to consider:

- A disproportionate number of prisoners are African American, and that subset are mostly in prison for crimes that whites simply don't go to prison for (e.g., pot, or coke vs. crack).

- US prisoners aren't given nutritionally adequate food for free. They have to buy that at inflated prices from the prison. Once they blow through any savings, their only option (other than malnutrition) is to work for wages that would be illegally low outside of prison.

- As during the transatlantic trade, it is straightforward to buy your way out of forced prison labor.

- A growing fraction of prisoners consider the current system to be eugenics as well as slavery. The prisons take the majority of men while they are at prime child rearing age. It's well known that any that do manage to have kids will probably be forced into a situation where they can't adequately care for those children (dad goes to prison for driving while black or whatever), making the next generation easy targets for the same scheme. (This is coming from current prisoners, not me.)

The other pushback against my comment boils down to "it's legal, so we don't use that word". Similar arguments were made in defense of the transatlantic trade. For instance, black Africans were generally the ones selling slaves, and often used real or imagined criminal records as an excuse. Any objective comparison of the two systems would find that the transatlantic slave trade was roughly as immoral California's three strike law is in practice. You could argue the slave trade was worse because the kids were automatically slaves. In the current system, they're only probably going to prison, but the prisons also aren't paying to raise them.

I suggest reading Things Fall Apart if you're unfamiliar with the African side of the slave trade.

I appreciate what you're saying, but my point is actually that the US view is that "slavery has been abolished for 150 years" makes for a very US-centric view of history. Which for a 250 year old country is laughably closed minded both backwards and forwards in time.

The context of what I said is the parent comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31124042), specifically related to the US-centricism of the retold statement of "slavery was started by the United States".

The story of the world is not that slavery was created for the process of building the US as a powerful nation, and then abolished and now only dealing with the fallout and reparations. But I've heard this understanding many times in the US, to the point where it seems like the mainstream understanding there.

And yes, those teams really did come up with their determinations of what was OK and what wasn't, based on their own beliefs. That made that quite clear in their repeated, stupid posts on memegen.

It ain't exactly the hottest, edgiest shitposting club out there.

I think those types of people are even more likely to end up as paid content moderators, since the work tends to be too tedious for most average people to deal with.

I love that you were courageous enough to say this because this is completely true and also why we say #ACAB. Most people who want to be police officers are absolutely unfit to be police officers!

There probably isn't any job which is an exception to this, politicians are similarly mainly people who want the associated influence and even engineers become engineers so they have control over engineering. It's just that the incentives are more perverse with politicians, police and moderators than with engineers.

From what I understand from rumors in the area, is those who couldn't become police (for whatever reason) would then go apply at the prison, and those who couldn't get a job there (and it appears they take anyone with a pulse) would go work for TSA.

Perhaps the "public servant" idea should be taken to a larger extreme, and some positions picked by lottery instead.

And get Damore'd?

What? Absolutely not. That is terrible advice when it comes to something that couldn't have been a literal accident. If he'd used the word "mother", then sure-- that could be apologized for. But a protracted essay on population level statistical differences between genders and its impact on the employment pool? Not a chance.

There is so much noise and outright disinformation about any issue that often the only reliable source for wrong doing is when the target of an accusation admits it themselves.

And even when that fails to protect you, at least you can be a hero to someone. Do you think a damore that apologized and said he was mistaken would be more employable? That people would eventually see it as a youthful transgression? I doubt it greatly-- it's not like the screens that show up when you google his name will yellow with age. Instead he'd just be the enemy to both factions of the war he wandered into, rather than enemy of one and hero to the other.

Sometimes, but doesn't apply here; the entire kerfluffle happened on an internal-public message-board. There was a paper-trail a mile long.

> Do you think a damore that apologized and said he was mistaken would be more employable?

Absolutely. Google management was very willing to give him a second chance. His mistake was basically tactless following of the existing corporate culture of internal openness, and they recognized that. Unfortunately, he did basically everything in his power to make retaining him as unpalatable as possible, claiming repeatedly the science was on his side and people shouldn't be afraid to debate science. Like I said: walking Title VII violation. You can debate the science all you want, but not as an employee in an American corporation that also has project authority.

In essence, he dared Google to either go up against the Civil Rights Act or admit they were hypocritical about their internal culture. They resolved the issue by removing the irritant (and the corporate culture took a hit too, as people realized in general that a liberal interpretation of it was incompatible with the Civil Rights Act. You can't just say whatever internally).

Compare with Facebook still employing the guy who did an A/B test on whether emotional tone of stories make people sad. Once he realized why that was a problem, he owned up to it and is still doing research at Facebook.

> rather than enemy of one and hero to the other.

Meh. Check his Twitter these days and he's not really their hero; the Right lost interest in him when the labor relations board ruled his firing was legal (they don't want to make a headlong run into the Civil Rights Act either... it protects most voters, so it's very popular).

... and besides, sometimes being hero to none is the most dignified course of action. I can name several historical figures who made the choice to join a faction as a hero at the mere cost of spending their finite lives serving actual evil.

blinks in disabled lesbian

As a Russian, this is amusing to read. For me and most people I know, when you meet a black person, it's totally normal to ask them "where are you from" because they can't possibly be local. Our society just doesn't have the concept of racism it seems because of the exceeding rarity of people who aren't European or Asian.

People in Russia are often discriminated against based on their sexual orientation, political views, and nationality though.

I'd say "racism" those days is a fairly weird word that I've seen infrequently applied as an umbrella term covering many different things.

It's almost certainly true that there is virtually no "classical" (black vs white) racism there. Russia never had any significant fraction of black population, and the flavors of slavery were quite different from the US. When Russian sees a black person, while their inner voice would surely say "this person is an alien", there's most likely would be no immediate derogatory prejudice involved - because to best of my awareness it was never instilled, at least not in the Soviet and post-Soviet mindspace.

But in Russia there surely is something similar, just of a different flavor - again, because of different history and societal composition. Say, doubtlessly there are tons of prejudices based on ethnicity - just remember how many derogatory names and jokes are there (and always were) for neighboring nations such as Ukrainians (this is so fucked up!), Georgians, Tajiks or Uzbeks; or Russian ethniticies - especially Chechens (this nationality is pretty touchy conversation subject).

A good example would be some of the pieces out there about what it's like to live in Japan as a black person, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMpxLmMnS6M - their society is definitely not going to racially discriminate like the US does, but that doesn't mean you won't experience any discrimination or unusual treatment due to your skin color being different.

Also, if people get discriminated against based on their nationality and you just said a black person can't possibly be From Here... it seems like if you combine those two statements that would mean black people would naturally get discriminated against since they're foreigners?

The nationality thing is more about those who work customer-facing jobs here. Like, you call a taxi, it arrives but you can't find where. You call the driver to ask where they stopped, but the driver is from Tajikistan or Uzbekistan and barely speaks any Russian. It is frustrating when you can't use your native language in your home country for something as mundane as asking the taxi driver where they are. Besides, they usually do their jobs much more shoddily, get paid less, and have lower standards. So, yes, these people have this kind of reputation, but every rule has its exceptions.

But then if someone is a foreign student for example, they are never treated like that. So I guess this discrimination is not against the nationality per se, but against people bringing their customs into someone else's society and refusing to blend in?

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis.

"So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."

-- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

We do have a word for racism by the way. It's, unsurprisingly, "расизм".

I suspect you are overlooking some pretty pervasive discrimination against minority groups because you have become accustomed to it, and/or because you aren't personally affected by it. While racism in Russia appears to have been improving over the last decade or so, it is hardly absent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Russia

Anyone who thinks otherwise: go out and talk to ethnically Asian people more. (For an outsider, keep in mind that anywhere in Russian Siberia there are very large indigenous Asian populations in proportion to total.)

My Asian friends are routinely discriminated against purely based on their appearance: subject to searches at subway entrances, subject to disdainful attitude by government officials, salespeople and other citizens. They will have trouble renting flats, etc.

This is significantly worse in western parts of Russia (where you can be targeted by gangs and skinheads), but is still present in their part of the country.

And it is those who were lucky to have gone to good schools and speak perfect Russian. Things are dimmer for someone who has a stronger accent.

Most of my Asian friends never talk about it, but one did, after which I started making observations and reevaluating past ones and recognized that it is very much true.

Those of middle eastern ethnicities (often immigrants and their descendants) have likely even harder time.

Yeah, I had my doubts too. The Wikipedia article claims that racist attacks have been on the decline, and supports that claim with some statistics from the SOVA Center. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if that were simply because those attacks have become so commonplace that they aren't reported at all, or that reports are being actively suppressed.

I've never been to Russia, but I'm finding it hard to believe racism doesn't exist there.

Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31126173

> Either way, people here aren't discriminated based on their race. Never were.

That is untrue.

You could argue the “pale of settlement” (instituted shortly after the annexation of parts of Poland made Jews more than a rounding error) was discrimination based on religion, not ancestry (and indeed it seems to have had some resemblance to the suppression of Old Rite communities, which did not have any particular ethnic composition as far as I know). But the distance between the two is easily bridged (one only needs to look at Ireland to see that), and by the 20th century it was, thoroughly, as evidenced by things ranging from Stalin’s Jewish resettlement attempts in the 30s and 40s (whence the “Jewish autonomous region”) to the ethnic quotas and heavily biased exams at the Mekhmat and elsewhere in the 70s and 80s (supported not only by a mass of mostly-forgotten university functionaries, but also by some of the genuine greats such as Pontrjagin, cf You Failed Your Math Test, Comrade Einstein).

(That last part is why any intentional bias or quota in admissions gives me the chills. Nothing will go wrong, surely.)

It’s not only the Jews, of course. The common euphemistic appellation for the situation on the Caucasus, “tensions”, hides a morass of mutual hatreds that is centuries deep, though again the results of Stalin’s disastrous resettlement efforts are best characterized as “fallout”, and the two Chechen wars intended as election publicity for Putin did not help. But a close look at the 19th-century colonization of the region as described indirectly by authors like Lermontov gives the impression that the whole thing was pretty fucked up even then.

(If you want to dismiss these places as “not really Russia”, you are proving my point, even if there are senses in which that statement is true.)

Shall we talk about the undocumented and (thus) vastly underpaid Middle Eastern migrant workers who have sustained most of Moscow’s municipal infrastructure for the last two decades? (Though perhaps not for much longer, given the recent monetary restrictions.) Who have reversed much of its despair- and alcohol-fueled collapse of the late Soviet times? That the low-wage jobs should go to them may not be not explicitly xenophobic (except inasmuch as any system of employment controls for foreigners is), just the result of the how the USSR was organized and how it fell apart; but I have an acquaintance who has adopted a child from there, and their experiences both with officials and with strangers off-handedly insulting the child or the family sound pretty straightforwardly racist to me.

And, well, let us be honest and acknowledge the mutual feeling of otherness between people from Central or Northern Russia and those from West Ukraine, Belarus, or even the south of the country as it currently is. It can range from having a stereotypical funny-talking character in jokes to toppling monuments, rewriting history, and going to war, but it’s been there for a long time, and the distance between these two extremes isn’t nearly as large as I’d like.

(Navalnyj has distant relatives in Ukraine? Everybody has distant relatives in Ukraine. If you want commentary on the Golodomor and whether it fits here, though, you’ll need to find someone qualified enough to talk specifics about it.)

This is not at all an exhaustive list. (What about the Tatars? The Russian Germans? The postwar expulsions, tacitly accepted by the West, that turned Königsberg into Kaliningrad and Danzig into Gdańsk? I’m sure there are things I’ve never heard of as well.) It might be that there is no “racism” in the precise North American mold in Russia or around it, but that is only because that mold is uninteresting (and to the extent that the opposition to it is built around its incidental features, that opposition is missing the point, although I would not claim to be the one to make it the Right Way). Xenophobia towards people inside or just outside the country, now that we have plenty of, and so does everybody else living on the ruins of an empire.

That is if the economic structures originating from serfdom in the Empire or from internal migration restrictions in the USSR are not enough for you. They might not always have an ethnic bent, but is that really that much of a consolation?..